Condemned
by Lady Mirror
Summary: It's a long road to damnation. Suman Dark.


Disclaimer: I don't own D. Gray-man

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He doesn't know what was going on. There is at one moment the market, and then smoke, and chaos, and a woman nearby is screaming and screaming, until the creature blows her head off. People are running, and all he can think is that he has to get away, he has to get away, _oh God, his family_.

So when the thing—the large black floating thing with that twisted face and that unfeeling toothy smile—corners him, he doesn't know what to do because he's just watched it dissolve Paul Rothan to dust and there's no way out of this alley, not unless he can fly. He's not even sure that would save him. Probably not.

He doesn't notice anything green and glowing strike his arm because he's so scared, even as he throws a desperate punch at the thing. It's only after it explodes that he realizes that his arm is heavy and covered in metal. He tries to pull it off, but it doesn't move. He runs out onto the street, stepping through his neighbor's dust without notice. He trips on an outcropping stone and lands on his knees, close to tears.

"Why won't it come off?" His voice is high and desperate, and his hand begins to bleed as he pries at it.

He feels a chill as the shadows fall over him, and he knows, he _knows_, that nothing will ever be right again.

---

The shadows—Finders—tell him that he's an exorcist, a special servant of God. He has the ability to free the resurrected souls of the dead, those that have become demons. They invite him to join their Order. He's not sure what to do.

But Jamie, sweet, loving Jamie has had another bad day. She's coughing so hard, and he can't help but feel guilty because he was the one who wanted them all to have a picnic last week. He'd thought that the fresh air would be good for her, but all it did was make things worse.

When the Finders tell him that they could get her well, it is the hardest decision he ever made. But in the end, he kisses his wife, hugs his daughter, and walks off to fight a war.

When he hears the door latch behind him he could swear he is the one trapped.

---

In a strange way, Johnny reminds him of Jamie. Maybe it's because the first time he saw Johnny his friend was bent over a calculation in the cafeteria, biting his tongue just like she always did before she checkmated him.

He finishes his meal alone and starts to head to his room when he's stopped at the door by Johnny, who is the first person who welcomes him home and sound like he means it.

So, after a slight pause, he smiles and asks Johnny if he plays chess.

---

It scares him how quickly suffering and death become routine. By the time he arrives, there will always be a few deaths, and people are there to scowl and sob and _why didn't he come before that demon killed my brother/lover/daughter/father/friend_.

He was a disciple of God, and he was never soon enough.

Sometimes it's all he can do to open his watch and look at Jamie's smiling face. He still pictures her as she was when he left, but she's healthy now. He knows it.

It lets him look past the destruction around him, because he knows she's alive and that's enough.

---

He hates seeing the latest recruits. They get off the boats in the highest of spirits, because here they're doing something, here they can avenge their loved ones, and here they can pay back their sin of survival.

So he tries to be away when there's a welcoming party, or at least pleads a headache and leaves early. He can't stand staying, because with all the bright banners and heaps of food all he can see are the bodies piled around him and the guest of honor laid out on a spit for the demons.

---

He considers himself a man of faith. Not a true clergyman because that was forced on him, but a man of faith. He believes in heaven, and hell, and he believes there are angels because he knows there are demons. Every night he tries to read out of his Bible, though sometimes he only manages to lift the cover.

Though he is an upstanding Christian, he has never read the story of Abraham's sacrifice without a curse in his heart. He understands loving God because that is expected, but when he reads that story and pictures God telling him to kill Jamie he knows he could never follow such a God.

Still, whenever he skips that story he feels cold.

---

It takes a few years in the Order before he realizes that they have no intention of letting him leave. There is wonderful food and medical care, and Jamie and his wife Helen will always have a home, but he will never see it. This Order is a lovely prison that not even the dead can depart.

He only realizes this when a Finder is lost, one of those who had taken him from his home. The body is cremated and is cast into the sea like so many others before.

And he realizes that not once has a body been sent home.

He asks Johnny during their next game of chess, and he is right. Bodies are not sent home, and no one sends condolence letters for fear of the dead being resurrected as another demon.

He wonders if his wife knew when he walked out that he was dead. He wonders if he would still have gone.

As Johnny puts away the chess pieces he realizes it's the quickest he's ever been beaten.

---

When he stays in the town with the wolves outside, he allows himself to dream. That's not just another woman that needs rescuing in the bed, that's Helen, and she's not sick but pregnant with his son. And as he plays chess it's not that round faced girl but his Jamie smiling at him as she beats him again.

He's startled out of his daydream when they are attacked. Afterwards, when the job is done, he opens his watch again and wonders if his little girl even remembers him.

---

He doesn't want to be here. Kazana and Chakar are dead at the strangers—the Noah's—feet and he doesn't know what to do. Their attacks all did nothing, and the Noah's still coming toward him, smiling and tossing up the buttons stolen from the dead.

He can't do anything, and he knows it. Kazana and Chakar will be put in white boxes and cremated, and they will vanish forever into the sea. In a few years, no one will remember them, if anyone is left to know.

He's shaking, and he's lowered his weapon, and all he can see is that smile and he hears himself pleading _anything, anything to save his life_. Jamie, Helen. He can't just vanish. He can't die. He has to return to them alive, or he will never return at all.

So when the Noah offers him a deal, he agrees.

He's always known he was damned.

---

Comments are always welcomed.


End file.
